About the AuthorJohn P. Mello Jr.

Reviews of Apple’s new iPhone 8 and 8 Plus have been laudatory. However, the reviewers can’t seem to get their minds off the jewel of the Apple universe, the iPhone X. Both the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are “awesome” and better than last year’s models — but iPhone shoppers who want to be part of the future will save their money and buy an iPhone X later in the year, suggested reviewer David Pierce.

Malicious code has been discovered in two versions of Piniform’s CCleaner housekeeping utility, the company disclosed on Monday. Piniform is owned by Avast, whose security products are used by more than 400 million people. The malware infecting CCleaner could give hackers control over the devices of more than 2 million users. CCleaner is designed to rid computers and mobile phones of junk.

Apple on Tuesday raised the curtain on its next-generation iPhone X, and it so far has been greeted with praise — though tentative — from early hands-on reviewers. For the most part, they gave the X kudos for design and build, but reserved their unequivocal endorsements until they could spend more time with the phone. A sore point with many reviewers was the mobile’s price.

Russian President Vladimir Putin last week poked the nest of anxieties over the use of artificial intelligence to gain power in a video address to students at 16,000 selected schools. “Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia but for all humankind,” he said. “Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”

The hacker group known as “Dragonfly” is behind sophisticated wave of recent cyberattacks on the energy sectors of Europe and North America, Symantec reported. The attacks could provide the group with the means to severely disrupt energy operations on both continents. Dragonfly launched a simililar campaign from 2011 to 2014, but it entered a quiet period in 2014 after its activities were exposed.

Pixelmator on Tuesday unveiled Pixelmator Pro 1.0 Whirlwind, a high-powered version of its popular photo editing application for macOS. Whirlwind will be available this fall. The app’s interface has gotten an overhaul — it’s now in a single window with no floating toolbars — and it boasts new nondestructive, GPU-powered image editing tools and enhanced machine-learning features.

Alexa has a new musical talent, Amazon announced Tuesday. “Today, we’re making Alexa even smarter with an all-new feature that lets you play music synchronized on multiple Echo devices to provide room-filling music throughout your home,” said Amazon Alexa Vice President Toni Reid. Setting up the syncing is easy. Using the Alexa app, you give a group of devices a name, such as “first floor.”

Apple plans to refresh its iPhone, TV and watch lines at an event scheduled Sept. 12. In addition to upgrading its iPhone 7 models, the company is expected to debut the “iPhone 8” to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the brand. It reportedly will have an OLED display with barely any bezel, a fingerprint scanner at the rear of the phone, and support for facial recognition and wireless charging.

Google appears to be planning a Pixel-branded Chromebook and a downsized version of its Home smart speaker, following in the steps of Microsoft and Amazon respectively. Along with two expected new Pixel phones, Google this fall will unveil a Pixel-branded Chromebook and smaller, lower-priced version of its Home smart speaker, according to a report.

Google has pulled the wraps off the latest version of its Android mobile OS. Version 8.0 Oreo has a number of improvements over 7.1 Nougat, the previous release of the OS. Google has tweaked Android’s notification feature, for instance, so when an app has notifications pending, a dot appears in a corner of the program’s icon. Press the dot and a window will pop up showing the notifications.

Increased use of open source software could fortify U.S. election system security, according to former CIA head R. James Woolsey and Bash creator Brian J. Fox. The two made their case for open source elections software after security researchers demonstrated how easy it was to crack some election machines at the recent DefCon hacking conference in Las Vegas.

Photos posted to Twitter show the next Samsung Note phone will have a dual lens camera. Reporter Evan Blass posted a photo of the front of a black Note8 to Twitter on Monday. On Tuesday, he added front and back images of gold and black versions of the phone, as well as a stylus device called the “S Pen.” The latest photos show a dual lens camera at the back of the phone.

Developers combing through the code for the Apple HomePod have found clues to what appear to be features in the next generation of iPhones, and they tweeted their discoveries on Sunday. The firmware for HomePod, Apple’s $349 smart speaker expected in December, apparently contains much of the codebase for future iPhones. One of the goodies in the HomePod’s code is a new biometric method for unlocking an iPhone.

Facebook has announced several updates to its live-streaming platform, including a new hardware and software vetting program used to create 360-degree video. Through its new Live 360 Ready Program, Facebook will review hardware and software and approve products that work well with its Live 360 offering. Products deemed “ready” for Live 360 will be allowed to display a Facebook Live logo.

The next version of Microsoft’s HoloLens may be better at navigating reality than the current version of the mixed-reality headset, thanks to a new coprocessor the company announced Sunday. The second version of HoloLens’ custom multiprocessor — called a “holographic processing unit,” or HPU — will incorporate artificial intelligence technology, Harry Shum, executive vice president of the Artificial Intelligence and Research Group.

Google’s augmented reality goggles were a flop several years ago — when intrepid explorers wore the devices in restaurants and bars, sparking reactions ranging from disapproval to outright violence — but they have become very welcome in the workplace. Their success in a host of business settings led The Team at X on Tuesday to announce an expansion of its Glass Enterprise Edition program.

With September fast approaching, speculation has begun to roil about the next generation of iPhones, particularly the iPhone 8, or whatever Apple decides to name its special 10th anniversary edition of its smartphone. However, fans aching to get their hands on the iPhone 8 may have to ache longer than those upgrading to the expected new iPhone 7s and 7s Plus models.

Microsoft this week announced the availability of Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux distro as a free download in the Windows Store. It can be installed on any Windows Insider build, said Microsoft Senior Program Manager Rich Turner. One of the advantages to using the Windows Store version of the Ubuntu Linux Distro is that the software can be downloaded faster and more reliably.

Microsoft has announced several new offerings aimed at strengthening its position in the cloud marketplace, including Microsoft 365 Enterprise and 365 Business, at its Inspire partner conference in Washington, D.C. Microsoft 365 Enterprise is designed to empower employees of large organizations to be creative and work together securely. Microsoft 365 Business targets SMBs with up to 300 employees.

Malware targeting Linux systems is growing, largely due to a proliferation of devices created to connect to the Internet of Things. That is one of the findings in a report WatchGuard Technologies released last week. The report, which analyzes data gathered from more than 26,000 appliances worldwide, found three Linux malware programs in the top 10 for the first quarter of the year.

The United Kingdom’s Parliament on Monday reported a cyberattack on its email system over the weekend, when hackers attempted to access user accounts without authorization. Due to the “robust measures” in place to protect the legislative body’s accounts and networks, fewer than 1 percent of the 9,000 accounts on the network were compromised, officials said. Accounts that were compromised reportedly had weak passwords.

President Donald Trump aims to save taxpayers $1 trillion over the next 10 years with a little help from America’s high-tech industry. “Our goal is to lead a sweeping transformation of the federal government’s technology that will deliver dramatically better services for citizens,” the president said Monday at a roundtable session of the American Technology Council.

Microsoft has decided to expand its support for Linux containers in the next release of Windows Server. Linux containers and workloads will work natively on Windows Server, said Erin Chapple, general manager for the server operating system. The company also will extend Window Server’s Hyper-V isolation capability, which was introduced in the 2016 release of the operating system.

News about Apple’s plans for the automotive market have been dripping slowly from the company for months, and CEO Tim Cook this week released a few more drops from the faucet. Apple’s auto efforts are zeroing in on autonomous systems, he said. Self-driving is a core technology that Apple considers very important to its auto plans, but it’s very challenging from an AI perspective, Cook noted.

Microsoft earlier this week announced the next version of its Xbox line of gaming consoles, ahead of E3 2017, now ongoing in Los Angeles. The new Xbox One X, which goes on sale Nov. 7 for $499, is slimmer than previous models and packed with power. With a 6-teraflop Scorpio engine, the One X has 40 percent faster graphics performance than its chief rival, Sony’s PS4 Pro.

A med-tech startup has developed a novel way to treat burn wounds. RenovaCare harvests a variety of cells, including stem cells, from a healthy area of skin on a patient. Those cells are then suspended in a water-based solution and sprayed onto the wound using the company’s SkinGun. “The sprayer allows us to have a generous distribution of cells,” explained RenovaCare’s Roger Esteban-Vives.

New voices for Siri and peer-to-peer payments are among the new features in the next version of Apple’s mobile device operating system iOS 11, previewed at the company’s annual Worldwide Development Conference on Monday. “With the new operating system, Apple has doubled down on many of the applications it has developed for iOS,” said Ross Rubin, the principal analyst at Reticle Research.

Apple raised the curtain on HomePod, its upcoming smart speaker, during Monday’s WWDC keynote presentation. The company also announced some desktop OS features for the iPad, and revealed its plans to become an augmented reality powerhouse. “Just like iPod reinvented music in our pockets, HomePod is going to reinvent music in our homes,” said Apple SVP Phil Schiller.

Essential, a company founded by Andy Rubin, the “father of Android,” on Tuesday pulled off the wraps on a new high-end smartphone. The Essential Phone, priced at $699, includes radios for connecting to all major U.S. carriers. The unit has an almost edge-to-edge display — there’s a bit of bezel at the bottom of its screen — that wraps around the 8-MP selfie camera at the front.

Microsoft on Tuesday announced a refresh of its Surface Pro tablet-laptop computer. Although Microsoft said the fifth generation of the unit has been redesigned from the inside out with more than 800 new custom parts, the Surface Pro looks similar to its predecessor. “If you were looking for a major redesign of Surface, this isn’t it,” said Ross Rubin, principal analyst at Reticle Research.